OVERLOOKED AVANT-GARDE IN THE YOUTH OPUS OF LOJZE KOVAČIČ

Abstract

The article presents the literary works foryouth by Lojze Kovačič (1928-2004) who mostly wrote for adults.He was born in Basel, Switzerland, but before the Second World War, the author's family had to leave Switzerland and they emigrated to the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia, to the birthplace of his father. As early as 1947, he began publishing in Slovene in the student newspaper “Mi mladi” (We Young). After 1950, he wrote short modern fairy tales for children with modernist elements typical of adult literature. This deliberate modernity already heralds a top author who, for example, translated Kafka for children. In his initial phase, he collaborated with illustrators (e.g., Milan Bizovičar), created comics with avant-garde art elements and wrote science fiction. The most famous is the collection of short contemporary fairy tales “Zgodbe iz mesta Rič-Rač” (Stories from the City of Rič-Rač, 1962- ) which has been reprinted several times and represents only a third of the author's oeuvre. Two-thirds are unpublished, scattered through various radio shows and magazines. The editor of Pionirski list, Marija Kovačič Vida, published texts by a whole generation of authors in the 1950s and 1960s. In the most famous anthologies, entitled “Za celo leto: priročnik iger in deklamacij” (For the Whole Year: A Handbook of Games and Declamations, 1960) and “Praznični koledar: pesmi, črtice in igre za šolske prireditve” (Holiday Calendar: Poems, Literary Sketches, and Games for School Events, 1976), she made an outstanding review of literary creativity intended for children and youth. Based on the study of the author's oeuvre for youth, we can easily conclude that the author is a pronounced modernist, as he used avant-garde approaches, elements of art deco, Bauhaus, camera obscura, puppets, mundus inversus, commercials, etc. He translated picturesque visual images into modernist texts for young people. At the end of the article, suggestions are given for a scientific-critical monograph dealing with the author's literary opus for youth which is characterized by translation of visual into verbal and vice versa (e.g., puppets, comics), as well as between other media. It is paradoxical that L. Kovačič in his literary worksintended for adults was rather critical of the socialist system in his second homeland (1945-1991), but he nevertheless published the most literary units for youth during this very period, and his work was also regularly included in the curricula (1984, 1998) and readers in schools, while in the latest curriculum from 2019 he is completely overlooked and omitted. Based on his writing, L. Kovačič is a truely European author. He died on 1 May 2004, the day Slovenia became a member of the EU and the intense oblivion of history began. L. Kovačič was one ofthe victims of this process.

Keywords: Lojze Kovačič, youth opus, art deco, avant-garde, Bauhaus, topsy-turvy world, camera obscura, puppets, radio, commercials.